


bodyache

by Einhorn



Series: A Little Bit Off The Mark [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Characters Tagged As They Appear, Gen, Sensory seeking, Special Interests, Stimming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 05:30:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4594656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Einhorn/pseuds/Einhorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles of various Inquisition members observing Sera’s “odd” behaviors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blackwall - Pressure

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to practice 2nd person and yknow, I can never resist an excuse to write autistic Sera. If you have any prompts for these sorts of drabbles, feel free to comment with it !

You find her a bit strange sometimes.

She’s wild, loud, and a bit touched in the head, that you know. Other times she’s quiet, just sitting and twisting her hands together. Or flapping them, or rocking back and forth with the most pensive expression on her face.

She visits you in the barn once, after a bad night. Says she had a nightmare, where she had parents, but they left her because she was “too weird and crazy”, to use her words.

You don’t say anything, because words usually don’t have very much meaning to her, but you hold open your arms. Once, someone joked about you being a father. Tonight, you will be that father.  Papa bear , the girl in your arms had once called you teasingly. 

She leans into you and you hold her close. You tuck her head underneath your chin, and she calms immediately. It’s a strange thing--just a little bit of pressure around her shoulders, and she’s as quiet as a lamb. You watched the Inquisitor bring her down from a very bad place once just by wrapping her in a weighted blanket.

You don’t question it. You wait for her to finish with her tears, then lay her down to sleep on your own palette. You try to be the father that never was. 


	2. Vivienne - Food sensitivity

You’re at Halamshiral.

You’re sitting at an elegant table eating an elegant meal with elegant silverware.

You’re not sure why the Inquisitor brought her--the elf. She is incredibly out of place here (you try to forget her introduction to the court) and it shows. She knows not how to use the elegant silverware, knows not how to sit at an elegant table, and is certainly not used to an elegant meal.

You spare a glance at her plate, and try to hide concern at the fact that she has barely eaten at all. The only thing long since consumed was a portion of some kind of meat, which you are currently elegantly cutting into. You tell yourself you’re not concerned at all, but you can’t help but be considering her history of having a disturbingly fast metabolism and a pit of a stomach.

The meat came with a side of vegetables. These, she does not touch, as though they are poisonous, except for one carrot. You watch her out from the corner of your eye as she takes a hesitant bite out of it, and disgust immediately crosses her face. 

You then remember that you’ve never seen her eat anything crunchy before.


	3. Varric - Texture Sensitivity

She’s a strange one, but you’re not all that unused to strange fellows.

For one, she’s constantly touching things. Always has to be touching them, testing their textures, finding if she likes them. She likes something, and she’s content for hours. She hates something, and she recoils and sometimes literally hisses.

You don’t entirely understand when she asks to touch the hair on your jaw, but you don’t refuse her. You know how much it means to her, this…. “sensory input”, as someone told you. And the expression on her face when she finds a particularly rough patch of hair is  priceless .

You feel bad for laughing after, though. Her hands twitched for a solid twenty minutes. 

Next time, you make sure to show her only the soft spots.

 


	4. Dorian - Special Interest (Part 1)

For all the books the girl has in her room, she still finds her way up to Skyhold’s library. She’s “exhausted her options” she says. When you ask of what, she says books. When you ask what  kind of  books, her voice takes on a dreamy tone, and she says, “About  dragons. ”

You tell her that there’s an entire section on the subject, and you’ve never seen her so excited before. 

She sits and reads and reads and reads until she’s blasted her way through several large tomes and you can’t believe the sight. Normally, the elf girl won’t sit still for anything, but she is absolutely  enraptured  by the text between aged leather bindings.

It is endearing in a way you can’t describe, and you wonder if she’d ever gotten a chance like this before--to learn like this. To learn something she wanted to learn, that wasn’t just something necessary to live. The happy tone in her voice when she dumps all she’s learned on you is hard to ignore.


	5. Iron Bull - Special Interest (Part 2)

The dragon’s dead, and you’re amazed at how much she’s babbling. On and on and on, about the species of the dragon, of what kind of breath it breathes (which we know now, having killed it), how old it is according to how big it is, why its scales are pigmented how they are, absolutely  everything . You laugh, and the Inquisitor Amalthea pulls her close to congratulate on her knowledge of dragon-lore and give her a kiss. 

The grin split across her face and the absolute  joy  in her eyes is something you’ve not seen in someone for such a long time. You swing her up to sit her on your shoulders as her lover steps away to begin to skin the beast, and you can feel her fairly vibrate in excitement of getting to see the dragon’s inner workings.

You don’t even mind when she absentmindedly kicks her legs against your chest. The elf’s happiness makes the eventual bruises from thick boots hitting flesh worth it.


	6. Cole - Meltdown

You don’t know what to do.

She’s sobbing. She’s been sobbing for hours, and you don’t know what to do. You’ve never had to deal with someone like this before--someone who’d be so put off by a sound, a touch, a word. Well, you have--yourself. But you’re a spirit (demon, in her eyes), and she’s so very afraid. You have to tread softly, can’t do something so bad that it makes it worse. You have so much compassion, yet you don’t know how to use it.

Amalthea told you to sit with her. The Inquisitor would be the one here with a hand on her shoulder and a kind word in her ear, if not for the fact that Halamshiral did not allow her any peace from The Game’s clutches.

You allow yourself a moment into her head, and are for a moment reminded of yourself. _Too loud, too much, too many people, can’t think can’t breathe need to go, go, go._ You’ve been here before, and you wish you could comfort her, but you know she won’t hear. You only want to help.


	7. Solas - Information dump

The girl doesn’t understand you. Doesn’t understand your words (and not just the elven ones) and when you try to teach her, it doesn’t stick. The association of words to meaning is lost on her, and you’re at a loss as to why and or how.

You assume that an irregularity in the structure of her brain is to blame, or just a general lack of intelligence. She proves otherwise though, again and again, when she spews intense volumes of seemingly unrelated yet still fantastical facts about every subject under the sun. You are surprised when she even knows the names of the Elven gods, despite her disdain for their existence. You think it humorous when the only name she stumbles on is Fen’Harel. 

When she finishes her (admittedly endearing) rambling, she looks quite lost and a little bit embarrassed. You make a point to not be so hard on her in the future. 


	8. Cassandra - Stimming

If there is one thing that you have been intrigued by, it is how much she  moves . Her tavern room is directly diagonal to your normal training spot, so you tend to see much. She is always pacing, either inside her small space or atop her claimed territory (the roof). 

When on missions she’s skipping, or just walking, but with hands flapping relentlessly. When they take a rest for the evening, she sits, but she’s rocking back and forth and twitching one or both of her legs. 

When she is forced to be still, you catch her with her hands busy underneath fancy tables twirling string between her fingers. Once, you got mad at her, and you’ve never seen someone flinch so bad before. Amalthea scowled, and you found yourself scrambling to apologize without making it worse.


	9. Other #1

She’s handed a wool ball.

It’s filled with something weird--tiny beads, she thinks--and it’s squishy. And soft. Very soft. It reminds her of warmth, mostly because of the wool. The wool is red, with gold stitching along the seam.

Amalthea calls it a “stress ball”, and says that Sera’s meant to squeeze it whenever she feels bad. The squeezing does help, but it’s the material that really helps the most. She can’t help it--she loves soft things. 

She rolls the wool between her palms and marvels at how soft every time. It’s so soothing. The reasons as to why textures affect her so remains a mystery to her, but she doesn’t mind it one bit, not while a simple thing as a worn woolen ball can make a shitty day bright in an instant.


	10. Other #2

 

Oh _Maker_ , it can’t be missing.

Her scarf. The leather one, the one that settles so nicely around her neck. It’s gone--just. Gone. She fell asleep in it, that she knows. She didn’t take it off, that she knows, though her memory’s shit at best, and nonexistent at worse.

She tears her room apart as she looks. The lack of pressure feels wrong feels bad and she feels so horribly sick that she ends up in a curled-up heap on the floor, tugging for a blanket, her shirt, just something to put around her neck.

She scrapes her fingers into her scalp and the blemishes on her cheeks. Not even the blanket can replace the scarf, how it feels, how it feels like it’s a part of her. She digs through piles upon piles of objects, things stolen and hoarded just to feel like she has something, tears up the pillows on her bench---

\--There it is. It’s there, it must’ve fallen off overnight. She puts it back on, she can _breathe_ again, oh _Maker_ she can _breathe_.

She can breathe. The pressure, that same pressure that’s been with her every since she snitched the damn thing. It warms her and calms her down, makes her feel _safe_.

Makes her feel safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> direct experience of going any time at all without my own scarf :|


	11. Other #3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bros.,,,,let me just,,,,write stimming,,,forever and evr ans. like ever. love the sim. respect the sim. embrace the stim.

She’s so fucking cute Amalthea can barely stand it. Sitting there in her beautiful, colorful room with the plush pillows and sunlight streaming in.

She’s sitting on the bench, lips slightly parted in a smile with soft sounds whispering out. Her eyes are closed, her expression peaceful, her body rocking back and forth ever so slowly. Her hands, waving up and down gently, lightly curved and graceful.

Amalthea’s done her fair share of hand-waving and flapping and she knows how good it feels. How much it keeps her calm, keeps her head on straight, keeps her stimulated and grounded. Knows, too, that since their unfortunate jaunt into the fade that Sera’s grasp on reality can be shaky. Fragile, easily broken with a word, a touch, a look. Sees and hears things that aren’t there, doesn’t sleep at night because otherwise the nightmares, the nothing, they’ll get her.

The quiet rocking and hand-shaking she’s doing now is a welcome change from the frenzied week-long panic attack she had only been just barely able to break herself from. It’s also so absolutely  adorable  that Amalthea can’t help but chuckle. She sits down next to her lover and throws an arm over her shoulder, to pull her close and rock with her. 

Sera’s smile is infectious. Amalthea gains a grin of her own and feels her spirits lift for the first time in weeks. The elf leans into her, and together they sing.


	12. Self-juvenilization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is set somewhere before the events of Begin Again (which I am still working on! never fear. i just have another long oneshot that’s….sitting at 5k words and not done whoops).
> 
> Self-juvenilization is the act of an autistic person acting/behaving/taking interest in things younger than themselves. This may be a youthful way of speaking, dressing, or taking interest in things considered for children.
> 
> I self-juvenilize myself to a small degree. I love my toys. There's nothing wrong with acting childish even if you're an "adult".

The first thought that crosses her mind when she sees the first of many markets in Antiva City is:  I want to touch everything . 

So bright, so colorful, so  different . Sera wants to touch the beautiful fabrics of the weaver, the soft leather sold by the tanner, the spotted furs from the trapper. She wants to touch it  all,  and the compulsions to do just that make her fingers twitch. 

Amalthea notices her discomfort and takes a hand in hers. Together they make a show of inspecting the wares, a perfect excuse for Sera to touch and touch and  touch . Her hands glide along the silk, the fabric so much like that of the pillows in her old Skyhold room. Her fingertips tap at the leather, hardened for us in the manufacturing of armor. Her palm strokes the furs, the pelt as soft as a kitten’s. 

She ends up with a small sample of each to add to her growing collection of toys--not of the sexual kind, oh no. Children’s toys, ones she couldn’t have when she was a little one. A doll, a wooden dragon carved with so many textures given to her by Blackwall, a stuffed cat, and a puzzle cube which she’s taken to keeping in her pockets and fiddling with whenever she feels an impulse to scratch at her face. 

Sometime she gets self-conscious that she likes her toys so much. She doesn’t understand--why’s it so bad that she be happy? What’s so wrong with trying to fill in the spaces where she had nothing, all the times her toys in Denerim got stolen? So what if she wants to feel like a kid sometimes, there isn’t anything wrong with it. 

Of course, the toymaker gives her a bit of a look when she approaches his stall with barely concealed glee. She’s never seen so many toys in her  life . Dolls with dresses of so many colors, little carved figures of animals and people, stuffed animals made from fur nearly as soft as the ones she’d touched earlier, just-- everything . So colorful, painted with bright paints and sewed from fabrics of so many beautiful patterns. 

Regretfully she turns away, because pretty comes with a price and it’s a bit high. She gingerly places the unicorn doll made from white silk that reminds her of Amalthea back down on the table and forces herself to step back, to focus on something new, because she’s not going to ask for that, no matter how much she wants it. She finds a stall of puzzles and plays with those instead, fingers turning the wood over and over again so fast it’s a blur. 

“Here.”

Sera jerks her head up from a particularly tough puzzle to face Amalthea. In the ex inquisitor’s remaining hand is the unicorn doll. 

“For me?” she squeaks, “Honey-tongue, it’s---it’s so--it was so much, I didn’t--” she blushes furiously and ducks her head down again. 

“Take it,” Amalthea says. She’s smiling. “I’m allowed to spoil my wife every once in awhile. It’s okay to want things.”

“I--” Sera opens her mouth to argue, several years worth of instinct telling her that it’s frivolous, that there’s better things for Amalthea to be spending her money on. But for once, her heart wins over her head. With hands as gentle as she can muster she takes it, bringing it up close to her face to stare. It’s about as big as her head and strengthened with wire and stiff stuffing, making it able to stand on four legs on its own. The coat is soft white fur trimmed short, with a mane and tail-tuft made from fennec. The horn’s painted with a pearly purple, the same as the eyes.

It’s the most beautiful thing Sera will ever own, and that it was a gift from Amalthea makes it all the more special. She pulls her wife in close, hugs her tight, and whispers “Thank you,” in her ear. “You don’t think this weird, yeah?” she says too, “That I’m like--like a kid, but not?”

Amalthea presses a kiss to her cheek. “Not one bit,” She says with nothing but love in her eyes, “You deserve to be childish, to be happy.”

Sera laughs, a happy sound. “Grand!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you guess who I named my inquisitor after now? :P

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Rabbit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4907791) by [egelska](https://archiveofourown.org/users/egelska/pseuds/egelska)




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